


There's something about starting that makes you realize you've already begun.

by weaslayyy



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5126255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/pseuds/weaslayyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a week. At the same time, it's been eight years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's something about starting that makes you realize you've already begun.

It’s getting dark when Jake and Amy are finally able to walk out of the precinct building and take a breath. It’s been a long week, and neither of them deal particularly well with change. Amy grabs Jake’s hand and starts walking towards her car before she realizes that she hasn’t asked him whether he wants to spend the night. She stiffens.

“Yes.” It’s a declaration wrapped in the exhale of his breath as he tugs her along. She smiles, squeezing his hand as they amble on the sidewalk, swinging their hands between their bodies. He brings her closer, slipping his arm around her waist before looking down to make sure their new pace hasn’t caused their feet to step on the sidewalk cracks.

“Can’t risk your mom’s back, I know,” she mutters while adjusting her stride. Jake’s always been a muddle of idiosyncrasies, and after eight years as his partner she’d like to think she’s met most of them. They make it to her car, and part just long enough for Jake to slip into the passenger's seat. They sit.

“What’s the plan, Ames?” he asks. He’s looking at her, leaning on the headrest as he settles into the groove he’s been creating inside her car for the past eight years. She looks back, relaxing her grip on the steering wheel until her hands fall into her lap. She breathes, in and out, in and out, in and out.

Plans. They’ve kind of been in short supply the last week, or at least plans that work. The Captain’s gone, and he took Gina with him. Dozerman’s dead. The Vulture is in an official position of authority. He’s already tried to force them to break up.

Jake was demoted, for a moment.

In and out. In, and out.

“I don’t know, Jake,” she admits, something she feels she can only say to her seats and dashboard and boyfriend. Amy Santiago doesn’t know what to do, and that statement applies to more than just what she and Jake want to do tonight.

There’s a warmth in his eyes, a softness around the corners that says he understands what she’s trying to say, because it’s Jake, and she’s never really had to explain herself around him. One day she’ll tell him about the six months he was gone, about how she’d almost forgotten how often her words got stuck in the middle of her esophagus without him to riff off of. Not today, or even anytime soon, but at some point in the future she can see herself having that conversation with Jake, about those six months that he was gone and she realized how much she missed him.

It’s why she tried to end things, when the Vulture took his badge. Amy Santiago doesn’t have much of anything anymore, work wise, but right now she still has Jake. A demotion would have meant not being able to see Jake everyday, not sitting next to him as he checks something on her computer. Not being able to watch as he gives Charles confidence, gives Terry a son-in-progress and Rosa a friend. Gives Amy a partner that she doesn’t think she can stand to lose, even at the cost of a six day relationship.

In, and out. One more time.

Jake’s still looking at her, but he’s found her hand at some point and fit each of her fingers in the gaps of his own. His thumb is rubbing along the back of her hand when he starts to speak, voice low in the quiet that’s settled between them.

“It’s okay, you know” he says. “To not have a plan.” A wry smile. “Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose, remember?.”

She does, and it was exactly that type of thinking that led to six months of a Jake shaped vacuum, an entity that sucked all the air out of the room when acknowledged, whispering answerless questions like _Where is he_ and _What do you think he’s doing_ and worst of all, _Do you think he’s okay_?

Amy thinks she’ll stick to plans, herself. She gives him a noncommittal answer, a hum that shows him she’s listening, if not agreeing. He snorts, because it wasn’t like he was expecting anything else.

“Weeeeeellll, I think that we should go to the top of the Empire State building, and just like scream at the top of our lungs....or wait, we could do the Titanic thing!” He’s putting all of these affectations into his speech, exaggerating words and dragging out vowels for her amusement, folding his face into all sorts of interesting shapes as he continues sketching out the type of incredibly bad date scenarios that must have fueled his planning sessions for The Worst Date Ever. “I could totally be Rose, and you’d make a pretty smoking Leo diCaprio if you ask me (of course you would, you’re my girlfriend)”

“Or what if we went and teepeed the Vulture’s house?” he continues, a glint of violent mischief in his eye. “I’m sure Holt would get us out real fast, because you know _Anything for the Nine-Nine_.”

“I don’t think that meant bailing us out of jail, Jake,” she says with a hint of exasperation.

“He said _anything,_ ” he insists.

“He lied, then.” The look on his face makes her think about taking it back, but really, there’s no way Holt would bail them out of jail for teepeeing the Vulture’s house. Apartment. Brothel, whatever.

“So what else can we do then?” he asks. “ Dinner and dancing? Making out in the back of a movie theater like a bunch of hormonal teenagers? Freaking out hormonal teenagers trying to make out in the back of movie theaters with how gross we are?” He’s laughing again, poking her shoulder in place of punctuation marks.

Amy thinks about what she’d usually be doing at this point in a relationship, what she’d done with Teddy for their second date. Dinner, and a glass of wine afterwards. A split dessert, and just enough conversation to establish their lives and interests and personalities in the mind of the other. She thinks about doing the same with Jake and remembers the terrible date from a few days ago, how awkward it was to pretend that they hadn’t been sharing coffee and sweatshirts for the past eight years.

Jake and Amy have been living half of the other’s life for ages now, enough time for inside jokes and old nicknames. He’s met almost her entire family at one point or another, sitting with them at her medal ceremonies and in the halls of the hospital during the rare times she’s injured in the line of duty. She’s met his mom, been taken out to lunch with and without Jake, sends Ruth Peralta the Christmas card she’d send him if he didn’t dump all his mail in a bathtub. Amy has the key to Jake’s apartment because sometimes she’s on a stakeout without him and his couch is closer than hers at two in the morning.

They haven’t even been on a second date.

“Maybe we’re looking at this wrong.” she says slowly, trying to work it out in her head before she says it out loud. “We haven’t been dating forever, but dating’s mostly about getting to know the other person, right? Well we know each other. We have eight years of knowing each other, so what do couples that have been together for eight years do?”

She’s never been in a relationship that’s lasted more than a year, and the only people she knows that have been together for that long are her parents and the Captain. Neither of which are helpful in this context.

“Divorce, probably.”

“ _Jake_ ”

“Why do you think I know? My parents aren’t even married anymore!” He’s trying to keep it light, but she can tell she’s hit some sort of nerve inadvertently. “I don’t know, watch tv at home, bicker about the kids’ schedules?” He isn’t looking at her anymore, and his right hand looks like halfway to a fist. He’s never been very good with relationships, she supposes, and she’s just suggested that maybe they’ve actually been together for eight years. Baby steps. She lets it go, allows a few minutes pass in a comfortable silence.

“Hey Ames?” Jake’s voice is tentative, and softer than it's been all week. She looks at him, and watches as he bites his lip before continuing. “There’s a used bookstore a couple blocks away from my place. I’ve only been there the couple times I forgot to pay the heating bill, but it’s pretty nice. It’s open all the time, and you can make drinks and eat and there are some pretty dope chairs you can sit in.”

Amy’s a little confused at why Jake’s telling her this, but there’s a niggling in the back of her mind, an idea forming that she can’t fully grasp yet that tells her she should know. That Jake’s expecting her to understand. But Jake Peralta is also very good at reading her face, so he knows she doesn’t. He elaborates.

“I was just thinking that you might like to go there, and maybe read for some time,” he says. His expression is open, and his eyes are warm as he smiles at her. “You know, on a date?”

There’s a clenching in the cavity of her chest, a certain squeezing of her insides that she’s grown accustomed to associating with Jake. She feels it intensely at this moment, as he suggests they spend a day at a bookstore: this man-child who once told her that he’d only read 16 (and-a-half) books in his entire life.

“Jake,” she says smiling, “you don’t read!”

“Eh,” he replies, nonchalance masking the sincerity she can feel coating his words, “I could learn, for you.”

“A bookstore then,” she says. “What else can we do?”

He stops, eyes widening as he twists and, facing her grabs her hands in his and looks at her.

“A Bet!” He’s more excited than she’s seen him all week, and just for that she’d be willing to follow through on whatever madcap scheme he wants to drag her down. Then again, she’s always enjoyed a good competition. She nods at him to keep talking.

“It’s like you said, right? We already know each other, so we don’t have to do all that boring stuff, but I still want to like, go out.” He’s getting more and more animated, shaking her hands slightly to emphasize his points. “So what if we had a competition, where each of us had to design a date that the other person would like!”

An interesting proposition. She considers it.

“Like going to a bookstore would be a date for me,” Amy says, trying to think of the type of date she knows Jake would like. Something really weird, probably. Something that appeals to his sense of the ridiculous. “What about lazer tag, for you?”

“I like it, but too easy.” He smirks. “A solid C. Average.”

She pales, and then immediately tries to think, trying to link different things he might enjoy together into one epic date activity.

“So...how about roller skating, but with Nerf guns? And we’re playing Capture the Flag....well I guess you need people to do that, so maybe invite the squad along? Wait, is that even a date?” she rambles, watching his face light up as she speaks.

“Doesn’t matter, you’re a genius, when can we do this oh my god!!” She grins, as he practically levitates in his seat. He texts what she assumes is Charles, Rosa and Gina with some details about roller-capture-the-flag (he’ll probably name it) before placing his hands on either side of her face and leaning in to kiss her.

She melts, just like she has every other time he’s kissed her this week. Some vague part of her worries if it can possibly be this nice forever, if she can sustain the joy she finds in the way he angles his mouth, the way his fingers press into the skin at her hairline, his thumbs a comforting anchor near her jaw. As she exhales, making room inside her lungs for the smell of his aftershave mixing with his detergent, she decides that this is one question she doesn’t want an answer for, a Santiago first.

They break apart, sinking back into their seats, when she grabs his hand, giving him a firm shake like she learned at the seminar. She starts the car, pulling out of her spot and turning back onto the road before he can ask what they’ve just agreed to.

“What’s the prize,” she asks, eyes on the road.

“Dunno. Haven’t really thought that far into it, really.” He seems relatively unconcerned, though she can tell that he’s thinking, trying to come up with the type of prize either of them will want to win at the end of all this. A thought occurs to her. She laughs.

“Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose, yeah?”

His head snaps to stare at that, he looks at her and purses his lips before he darts a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth before she can yell at him for distracting her on the road.  

“Yeah Ames,” he says. “Can’t lose.”

**Author's Note:**

> My second b99 fic! Which conveniently coincides with college apps ramping up, but really why would I write about me when I could be writing about Jake and Amy? Thank you so much to everyone who read the last one, and left kudos, and/or comments. Also everyone who read the last one and didn't. Also everyone who didn't read the last one because why not? As always, I value any and all feedback. Also, if anyone has an idea for a peraltiago date please leave it in the comments I'm stuck after roller derby capture the flag with nerf guns. :)


End file.
